by Lisa Maxwell
A man. An unseen face.
“Thoth,” she said, her vision red with hatred.
The man stepped from the darkness and into the light. His head was bare, the brown skin of his scalp shaved clean of any hair.
“I knew you would come.” Her voice was brittle in its accusation.
“Ah, Seshat . . .” He shook his head sadly. “Of course I came. I came to stop you from making a terrible mistake.”
Her lip curled. “Do you think you can? You’re nothing but a man.”
“They call me a god now,” he said with a soft smile.
“They’ll see the error in their judgment soon enough,” she said, coming around the table so that she was between the altar and the man.
“You can’t destroy the pages you’ve created, Seshat. You would be damning all of us.”
Her eyes were bright with anticipation. The fear, if it had been there to start with, was gone now. “Who said I want to destroy them?”
The air, hot and dry from the arid desert day, began to move, swirling around the altar, and the stones began to glow.
“Stop,” Thoth commanded.
But she wasn’t listening. The stones had become bright points of light, like stars that had fallen to the ground, and between them, the threads of being—the parts of the world that held chaos at bay—began to glow in strange, eerie colors.
“You tried to take what was not yours to have,” she said, laughing a high, strange laugh. She sounded manic, unhinged, even to her own ears. Hysterical in her glee, she walked toward him. “You thought that you could wield power, you who were not born to it? You will never again touch the heart of magic. And your followers will turn on you. They will tear you to shreds. And I will dance over your bones as they dry in the sun.”
The man, who had been wearing a look of horror, lunged for her, his face contorted now in rage.
She wasn’t ready for his attack. She clawed at him, her nails raking red trails across his face, but he was stronger, and in the end she tumbled back, through the swirling colors and glowing threads that formed a boundary line around the altar, screaming as she went.
“Demon bitch,” Thoth said, sneering at her as he wiped the blood dripping from his cheek. He looked at it with disgust and then he stepped toward her, approaching the line of glowing air but not coming close enough to touch it.
Inside the circle, her eyes were wide with panic. She was trapped, just as she’d intended to trap the secrets of magic. “What have you done?”
“I’ve used your own evil against you,” he said. “You thought you could take all the power in that book for yourself?” He shook his head as he took the sword from his back, its blade curved like a scythe.
Inside the circle, Seshat raged and shrieked like the demon he’d called her.
“You know my weapon, Seshat, don’t you? A knife made from the stars. Iron that fell from the sky.” He walked over to the first of the stones and lifted the blade. “Capable of severing anything.”
“No,” she screeched, her voice ripping through the chamber.
But there was nothing she could do. Thoth brought the curved blade down and the stone split in two, its separate halves going dark. In response, Seshat released a keening wail that contained all the pain—the fear—that she felt.
Thoth walked to the next stone. “You won’t be able to cause any more trouble,” he told her, bringing the blade down again. “You won’t be able to collect power for yourself any longer,” he said, destroying the third stone.
By now she’d crumpled to the floor and was trying to pull herself to the altar where the book waited. When she looked up, her vision was going black. The darkness seemed to be consuming her, consuming the world.
Thoth walked to the fourth stone, and when he destroyed it, her spine arched and she fell backward onto the floor. It was darkness now pouring from her mouth, filling the room along with her wailing. But she pulled herself up again and looked at Thoth, the darkness in her eyes a living thing.
“There is nowhere you can hide from me,” she told him. “I will find you, and I will tear apart the world to make you pay.”
When Thoth drove the blade into the fifth and final stone, Seshat screamed one last time, the darkness pouring out of her until there was nothing left. No body. No blood. No bones. Only the empty echo of her screams.
THE UNMAKING
1904—St. Louis
Even as he came back to himself, Harte still felt like he was flying apart. He was haunted by the memory of the woman giving way to nothingness, could still feel the woman’s panic and her dread and frustration at being bested. At being unmade. In a flash of understanding, he felt her longing and fury. An eternity of being trapped within the pages of the Book, waiting and planning and growing more and more angry.
The power inside of him had a name.
Seshat. A demon who would destroy the world to take her revenge.
She had lived and walked and tried to take magic for herself, had tried to keep it from the world. She had been stopped. She had been destroyed . . . except that she hadn’t. A part of her had lived on in the very essence of the words she’d inscribed using her own blood. That part of her, the only part left after the rest had been destroyed with the stones, had waited in the pages of the Book, weak and broken and angry—so angry. But now it was ready—she was ready—to be reborn. To rip the world apart in retribution.
Harte was shaking with residual pain and trembling from the anger seething within him. Even as he surfaced from the vision, the shadows of a different time still hung around him, a haze through which his own world lay. He felt the dull smack of a hand across his cheek, and the shadows began to melt until only reality was left.
“What the hell, Harte?” Esta asked, and though her voice sounded angry, he was vaguely aware that there was a very different emotion in her whiskey-colored eyes. Fear.
He didn’t want her to be afraid. Without thinking, he raised his head and pressed his lips against hers, but she didn’t kiss him back. Instead she jerked away, with a look of absolute horror on her face. Her movement set the floor swaying.
Not the floor . . .
They were still in the boat, on the fake Nile in the heart of a fake Cairo, and they were supposed to be stealing a necklace. Behind him, he heard the oarsman make a shocked and disapproving sound. And Esta’s still dressed like a boy.
“We need to go,” she whispered through clenched teeth. “Now. Before he calls someone.”
Harte wasn’t sure if he could stand, but there wasn’t really a choice. Using the railing to steady himself as he disembarked, he forced his legs to move, even as his head pounded dully and his vision was still wavering.
“We need to call this off,” he told Esta as they joined the stream of other riders moving toward the exit. His legs felt unsteady beneath him as they started down the silvery path toward the chamber.
“It’s too late for that. And we’re too close,” she hissed. “What is wrong with you, anyway?”
“I think it’s more of a who than a what,” he said, remembering the heat and the pain and the feeling of himself bursting apart. And the betrayal. The ache of it was still so real, so palpable, it had left him reeling.
She cut him a frustrated look. “You are going to explain to me what that was back there—if we manage to get out of here, that is. For right now you are going to pull yourself together. You have the packet, right?” she asked.
He patted his coat and felt the final smoke packet beneath his hand. “Yeah . . .”
They were already nearing the end of the silver path, where it opened into the larger chamber. All that was left to do was set off this final packet and use the smoke as a way to clear the room of other people and as a cover to escape with the necklace. It wasn’t elegant, but it was workable.
But something wasn’t right. Unlike the previous days, when the crowd in the room was five or six people deep to take a look at the necklace, the chamber was empty except for the ha
ndful of other riders who had disembarked with them. There were so few people that they had a clear view to where the glass cabinet stood, holding the Djinni’s Star.
“No . . .” Esta’s voice came to him the same instant Harte saw it. “It can’t be gone,” she said, walking toward the clearly empty display case in the center of the room.
The power inside of him lurched, and for a moment Harte felt as though the entire world was spinning on, very far away from her, and he was stuck, unable to reach it. The necklace was gone.
“It can’t be—” he started, but on the far end of the room, a pair of Jefferson Guardsmen were watching the two of them. The other people had continued on through the chamber, because there wasn’t anything to see or draw their attention, so the Guardsmen had noticed Esta and Harte’s hesitation. But it was already too late. The Guardsmen traded glances, and one touched the gold medallion pinned to his lapel.
“It’s a trap,” he whispered, and the tone of his voice was enough to have her eyes going wide with understanding. “Come on.”
They ran for the exit, but Guardsmen were already moving as well. Ahead of them, the door to the Pike was a bright beacon, urging them onward, but even as they closed the distance, Harte heard the metallic scraping of the gate starting to close. The exit was only a few feet away, but they would never make it. Already, the bars were descending over the door, and he could feel the cold warning of corrupted magic, a power that felt too much like the Brink.
The power inside of him churned as it realized they would be trapped, and Harte stumbled from the intensity of its anger—her anger. But Esta was there, catching him before he could fall. All at once, the room went silent and the bars paused. He turned to her and could see the concentration on Esta’s face. Around them, the dust swirled in the air and the light slanted toward them from the Pike, calling to them, urging them to run. Faster. The power inside of him—Seshat—roared in triumph and pushed toward the surface, pressing at the already weak barriers he’d tried to keep up between her and the world.
In an instant, he saw what she saw, understood what she understood—the terrible power that was the beating heart of magic, the threat of chaos overtaking the world.
Magic lived in the spaces between all things, but if it ever escaped, it could destroy the very bonds that held the world together. In that instant he could see it, the dark emptiness that lived in the spaces—the same emptiness he’d seen in the woman’s eyes when she’d been consumed by it . . . The emptiness that had bled out of Esta’s eyes like a horrible nightmare of what was to come. It stretched and grew, tearing apart the pieces of the world. It wasn’t just destruction. It was an unmaking.
His new understanding was sharp and vivid and so real. If Seshat took Esta, if she used Esta’s power, she could destroy the world. He could see it—the world dissolving into nothing—but the clarity didn’t last for long. The moment they slipped through the gates, Esta released his hand and the world spun back into motion.
Outside the exhibit, the sun was blindingly bright and the Pike was in chaos, just as they’d planned it to be, but the Guardsmen from inside the exhibit were on their heels. Even before the two from inside could get out of the building, others were coming, pushing through the crowd to rush toward Cairo. Harte’s head was still pounding and his legs felt as though they would give way with every step, but he grabbed Esta’s hand, not caring how it might look, and pulled her onward.
The power inside of him surged toward her, but Harte didn’t bother to shove it back down. All his strength was focused on pulling Esta through the frantic crowd and escaping from the Guard. He found the passageway that led back into the rest of the Exposition, just as they’d planned, and as soon as they were free from the confusion of the Pike, they ran.
DISCOVERED
1902—New York
Jianyu pulled himself far back in the corner as he watched the stranger enter the apartment. The man was young—tall, but more of a boy, really—with blond hair and a worried expression on his face. He closed the door behind him softly as he stepped into the apartment, and then Jianyu felt magic fill the room. The tendrils that brushed against him were warm, familiar, and the guy turned to stare into the corner with a confused expression.
Jianyu held his breath, certain that the boy had found him when the blond took a step toward the place Jianyu was standing. The boy’s eyes narrowed, as though he were squinting to see through Jianyu’s concealment, and took another step toward him, his hand raised.
But then, suddenly, the guy turned back toward the darkened room. He waited, silent, as though he were listening for something. Then he went to the window and knelt beside it.
Jianyu considered his options: If he left, the door would open and the blond would know someone else had been there. If he stayed, it might be just as dangerous—the blond was clearly Mageus, and the more Jianyu pulled on his own affinity, the more likely he would be found. Either way, he chanced being discovered, and caught.
Then the blond did something that made Jianyu’s mind up for him—the boy began to tug at the windowsill. A moment later, the wooden trim came loose and he set it aside.
Again Jianyu heard the owl crying outside the window.
Too late.
But the boy was already pulling something from the space behind the window frame—a small package wrapped in cloth. Jianyu didn’t need to see what was inside the package to know that it was the ring. He could feel it, somehow, its energy sifting through the air, cool and hot all at once. Strange and yet also compelling.
Logan. With his light hair and the decisiveness with which he found the ring, it could be no one else. Why Logan had come here was a question that would need to be answered, but Jianyu set aside that question for the time being and focused on the opportunity the boy’s appearance afforded. This was more than a second chance—the ring and the boy here, together. The blond had located the ring, and now Jianyu would relieve him of it. And then, he would keep this Logan from causing any more trouble.
Slowly, he stepped closer as the boy began replacing the loosened piece of wood on the window. Carefully, so as not to make a sound, Jianyu moved toward the boy. A few feet more and the ring would be his.
Behind him, the door opened and the bare overhead bulb flickered on. Jianyu turned to see Evelyn in the doorway, her mouth as red as her hair and her eyes filled with fury.
“Well, what do we have here?” she asked with a smile that looked sharp enough to cut.
Jianyu backed out of Evelyn’s path as she sauntered toward Logan, who looked even younger and more unseasoned than he had appeared when the room was dark. The boy’s light eyes widened at the sight of her, and he tucked the package he had found in the windowsill behind his back.
“Now, now,” she said softly. “What do you have there, handsome?”
Jianyu felt Evelyn’s affinity flood the room. It was a soft, enticing magic that made him want to lean in and be seduced, and he could see that Logan felt the same when the boy’s eyes went glassy. He brought the package out and showed it to her.
“That’s better, isn’t it?” Evelyn’s mouth curved up as she took it from him and unwrapped it. Then she slid the ring onto her finger, and when she did, Jianyu felt her affinity swell. She reached out to caress the boy’s cheek, running her fingers through his light hair. He leaned into her hand, like a cat purring with contentment, but just as his eyes closed in satisfaction, she grabbed a handful of hair and, without warning, wrenched the boy to his knees. His eyes were still soft, submissive, as they stared sightlessly into the room, the effect of whatever Evelyn had done to him.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” she trilled in her singsong voice. Her eyes were bright with power and her teeth were bared beneath her bloodred lips. “I know he’s not alone. I can feel you here.”
Jianyu went still, glancing toward the open door as he felt the warmth of her affinity increase, the tendrils of it curling under his chin like fingers caressing him. He struggled
to resist it.
He could run now, but to run meant leaving the ring behind and leaving Logan to her mercy. Jianyu knew he could do neither.
“Let’s make this easy,” Evelyn said to the apparently empty room. It was clear from the way her eyes tracked without focusing on him that she had not yet found him. “You show yourself, and I’ll let this one go. Or leave now if you’d like. You’ll never get the ring, and I’ll keep this handsome boy here as a pet.” She stroked the boy’s cheek with her free hand, then slapped his cheek sharply to punctuate her point.
Evelyn’s magic was filling the room, already teasing at Jianyu’s will. He could stay. He could give himself over to Evelyn and—
No. Jianyu gave himself a mental shake and wrapped his affinity around himself more tightly, like armor against her onslaught. Perhaps he could still retrieve the ring. If he moved quickly, it could be his, but he would not be able to save the boy. Not with the magic floating through the air, calling to him even now.
He took a step toward them, but he could not tell whether he was stepping toward the ring or Evelyn’s call. He could not have stopped himself either way.
“That’s it,” Evelyn purred. “Why bother to fight?”
ONLY EMPTINESS
1904—St. Louis
Even as she ran, her lungs burning and her heart pumping, Esta could feel the heat from the power of the Book creeping along her skin where her hand was clasped in Harte’s. It felt as though it were testing her, a snakelike thing slithering alongside her own power, licking at her to probe for a weakness in her armor, for a way in. It was so much worse than back at the train station in New Jersey. Stronger. More dangerous—and also more enticing in a way it hadn’t been before.
But her mind was too full with the crushing disappointment of not getting the Djinni’s Star to really be tempted. The necklace wasn’t there. It was a trap. Which meant that someone knew they wanted it. Someone knew they would try to steal it. And if the Guard caught them now, they might never have another chance to find it.
